<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>loves like sleep to the freezing by mountainsbeyondmountains</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24339592">loves like sleep to the freezing</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountainsbeyondmountains/pseuds/mountainsbeyondmountains'>mountainsbeyondmountains</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Vampires, Werewolves, kind of?, season 6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:15:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,064</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24339592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountainsbeyondmountains/pseuds/mountainsbeyondmountains</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"We found a woman in the woods last night-- naked and covered in blood."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jon Snow/Sansa Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>183</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>loves like sleep to the freezing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It wasn’t like Ned Stark not to be home for dinner. He hadn’t said where he was going or when he’d be back, and all throughout the silent meal, Sansa stared at his empty chair at the head of the table. Only Arya— even when Sansa kicked her under the table— was brave enough to ask why he’d left. But Catelyn Stark didn’t answer. She only grit her teeth and cut little Rickon’s meat for him with even more force and vigor.</p><p>That night, Rickon was too young and Robb too incurious and though Bran tried to stay awake, only Arya and Sansa were lucid when Ned returned home after midnight. They crept out of the bedroom they shared, sat in the shadows at the top of the stairs to look down at the hallway below. Catelyn was waiting for her husband, and when he stepped through the threshold the first thing she said to him was, “So you’ve gone and done it then?”</p><p>“There’s no one else to take him in,” Ned replied.</p><p>“What about his father’s people?”</p><p>“I can’t leave a child with them. Lyanna made me promise—”</p><p>“What if that promise leads to a war? It’s supposed to be Robb, it’s always been meant to be Robb. But this boy is the same age as him. If he chooses to challenge Robb’s right to lead the pack, then there could be divided loyalties. We can’t trust him.”</p><p>“Catelyn, <em>enough.</em>” Never before had Sansa heard her father sound so apologetic, yet still obstinate.</p><p>There was a flicker of movement in the corner of the room, among the blackest shadows, and Sansa realized that the very person her parents were arguing about so fiercely— the boy, Lyanna’s son— was present. She gasped, causing Arya to slap her hand over her mouth in an effort to silence her. Neither of their parents noticed, but the boy did. He looked up the stairs at them with mercury eyes, and Sansa suddenly knew that he could see in the dark just as well as she could.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>FULL MOON</p><p>Tormund Giantsbane’s voice is the loudest sound in the bar, thundering over the discordant clinking of glasses, the patrons jeering at a staticky radio sports broadcast, the underlying rumble of rumor, the wind howling outside like a grieving woman. Tormund stands up and says, “We found a woman in the woods last night.”</p><p>This far north, women are scarce enough that everyone in the bar stops and listens to him— wildlings and northmen and drifters alike. Even those who were in the woods with him under the full moon last night and already know how the story ends. Even Jon listens, though he pretends not to. Delighted to have captured a live audience, Tormund goes on, “A naked woman, mouth covered in blood.”</p><p>From behind the bar, Val scoffs, “It wasn’t so salacious.” But the others pay her little mind.</p><p>“Was she a wolf?” Grenn asks, to which one of the wildlings replies: “Not one of ours.”</p><p><br/>“A southerner, then."</p><p>“No, southerners can’t be wolves.”</p><p>“Anyone who lives south of Castle Black—”</p><p>“—Is a southerner, aye, we’ve heard you say it a thousand bloody times before.”</p><p>Vexed at these digressions, Tormund slams his mug of beer against the ancient wood of the bar and says, “She was a wolf without a pack.”</p><p>“Could be a Stark,” Sam timidly suggests. At those words, Jon grows very still.</p><p>“There are no Starks,” Edd replies. “The Boltons hunted them to extinction.”</p><p>“A bloody shame.” Davos Seaworth says. He casts Jon a meaningful glance, probably meant to rally him. Davos has all sorts of notions about what Jon ought to be doing— but Jon pretends to ignore the older man, and takes a long swallow from his pint glass. Not that he needs to eat or drink anymore, but he’s recently discovered that others are disturbed by his lack of natural appetites.</p><p>Val, who isn’t so easily deterred as Davos, sidles down the bar and says, “This mystery woman wouldn’t tell us her name. But she claimed to know <em>you, </em>Snow.”</p><p>“Everyone who knows me is in this very room.” <em>Or dead, </em>he silently adds.</p><p>“I told her you’re no longer with us,” Tormund says. “That’s what you want us to do, right? I even showed her the obituary. But she insisted otherwise.” He bares his teeth in a wicked grin. “She told me she could smell that I was lying.”</p><p> </p><p><br/>WANING GIBBOUS</p><p>Val had snapped her jaws at all the men in the wildling pack when they’d found Sansa lying unconscious in the woods; Val had lent her some clothes she kept in the trunk of her car; Val had let her use the telephone at the bar to call Brienne; Val had asked who she was running from, but respected her silence as an answer; and Val had given Sansa the address of the apartment she now stands outside of. No one answers when she knocks, once, twice, three times.</p><p>“Maybe he’s not home,” Podrick suggests.</p><p>“His motorcycle is parked in the lot,” Sansa says. She recognizes it— the same one he used to wash and wax in the driveway with loving care every Saturday morning, the same one he’d used to leave home five years earlier. She decides to wait for him here, in the rickety metal stairway just beyond the apartment door. Brienne and Podrick acquiesce to this, though Podrick keeps stamping his feet in a vain attempt to ward off the cold.</p><p>But as the sky becomes imbued with darker blue, and the stars illuminate— clearer and brighter here than they ever are in the industrial smog of Winterfell— Brienne says, with uncustomary gentleness, “Maybe now isn’t the best time.”</p><p>Sansa is sure that what she really means is, <em>are you sure he’ll want to see you? </em>Sansa can’t blame her for wondering. She was always the least-favorite, barely even a sister, daydreaming and disdainful. They hadn’t even said goodbye, and the memory makes her waver. Maybe Brienne is right. But then the lights in the apartment all wink on. Sansa knocks once more. The door opens—</p><p>Val had warned her that he’d be different than the boy she’d once known. Some aspects of him are the same— eyes that can see in the dark, a long lean body that boldly leads with the chin yet flinches when she plunges into his embrace like a knife. Val had warned her, yet Sansa can’t help but gasp, “Jon, what have they done to you?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Every morning, without fail, Catelyn Stark used to fix six mugs of tea, brewed with leaves of wolf’s bane that she’d grow in the garden, between the mint and the winter roses. “You can’t miss drinking it, not even once,” she’d sternly explained to Jon when he first arrived in Winterfell. “Once is all it takes. When you turn thirteen, you can decide for yourself if you want to make the transformation. But until then, the woods are too dangerous. And besides, I won’t have all of you tracking mud and shedding fur throughout the house.”<br/>When the time came, he, Robb, Arya, and Bran all decided to stop drinking wolf’s bane. Rickon, too, surely would’ve made the same choice if he’d gotten the chance. He was always the wildest of them, only six years old when Ned died, eight when Jon left home, and eleven when the Boltons’ silver bullets found homes in Robb and Catelyn.</p><p>Catelyn was right, the woods <em>were </em>dangerous, but the children— they didn’t realize it at the time but that was what they were— learned to become dangerous too. Only Sansa chose to keep dutifully drinking wolfsbane. Jon remembers how she used to watch them from her bedroom window, then spend the full moon clawing at the walls and dreaming restless dreams, while the rest of them ran wild, and Theon Greyjoy wondered and envied, and Catelyn waited all night for them to return home safely.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sansa asks him where he goes at night.</p><p>A fragile peace settles between them like a blanket of fresh snow, disguising the rot of regret and blame. Neither of them wants to be the first to step out and mar this illusion of tranquility. There’s only one bed in the apartment— Jon sleeps there during the day and Sansa at night, while Jon is working on the oil lines with Sam, Grenn, Pyp, Edd, and all the rest.</p><p>Some nights, Sansa helps Val at the bar, earning herself some generous tips. She writes in a notebook furiously and endlessly— making plans, she says when Jon asks her. She pawns her wedding ring for a considerable sum. Her bruises begin to fade.When Jon is getting ready for work and she’s braiding her hair before bed, she’ll read him a few lines of poetry— “<em>that corpse you planted last year in the your garden, has it begun to sprout? will it bloom this year? or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?”</em></p><p>And most nights when Jon returns home, his hands are covered in black oil but sometimes his hands and mouth will be stained red.</p><p>He sees the silhouette of her waiting for him, the darkest thing in a dark room. He stumbles into the bathroom, winces as he turns on the light, and commences cleaning his hands. He waits for her to start screaming— as a girl, she could never abide violence, had shrieked at them to stop when he and Robb and Theon would brawl, had looked away sobbing the time they’d been unable to save a bird with a broken wing. Now she’s silent and calmer than him as she rises to lean in the bathroom doorway.</p><p>“Wash your clothes with vinegar,” she advises him.</p><p>“All right. Thank you,” he mumbles, unable to look her in the eye.</p><p>“Where did you go?”</p><p>He doesn’t reply, just scrubs his hands so hard that it hurts.</p><p>She says, “I’m not idiot. Davos told me about— what they did to you. <em>Who </em>did it to you. And I’ve been reading the paper, I know those same men have been turning up dead from blood loss.”</p><p>They’re not all men, though. Olly was just a boy.</p><p>“Jon, you can talk to me about this. I don’t <em>care</em>, I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. It’s only justice, after what they did to you—”</p><p>“It might just be vengeance, though,” he replies. “Your father wouldn’t do what I’m doing. Neither would Robb. Do you still not care?”</p><p>“I want the same thing you do,” she tells him.</p><p>“Aye, and what is that?”</p><p>She says, “You know, Ramsay used to pin me down, hold me by the hair. Right <em>here, </em>where it hurts.” She touches him at the delicate point where skull meets spine, and Jon shivers. “Someone else, one of his thugs, would pry my jaws open and Theon would pour the wolf’s bane down my throat. His hands shook, but he did it all the same. Every night. Even when Ramsay was gone on a hunt, he trusted Theon to do this for him. It took a long time to persuade him. I told him that even if he never loved me, at least he’d loved Robb. But eventually it worked. Prisons that can hold a woman can’t hold a wolf. And like Mother always said— it only takes once.”</p><p>Jon supposes she doesn’t owe him any more of an explanation than that.</p><p>“Wash your clothes with vinegar,” she says again, more softly this time. Then she leaves him.</p><p>In the shower, Jon remembers what Tormund had told him— <em>a naked woman, mouth covered in blood— </em>and is suddenly relieved that the hot water ran out long ago.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I don’t want to fight anymore. That’s all I’ve done since I’ve left home,” Jon says to her, not long after she arrives. In response, Sansa is silent. He mistakes this for acceptance.</p><p>A week or so later they go to the only bar in Castle Black, a prospect which Jon is hesitant about even as they’re walking through the frigid night. Before they cross the threshold, he warns Sansa: “Whatever you do, don’t ask Tormund about the bear”— referring to the taxidermied grizzly snarling and standing seven feet tall in the corner of the bar.</p><p>He tells himself that the reason he feels so disquiet is because he doesn’t know how Sansa will react to the wildlings or the men he’s come to consider brothers in the years since he left Winterfell. It’s a collision of unknown elements. And though they’re good people, he doesn’t know if Sansa will scorn these men with grit under their fingernails, or they in return won’t care for her tendency to come across as regal and forbidding.</p><p>But as it turns out, Jon needn’t have worried. Sansa earns Tormund’s respect by downing a mug of his home-brewed giant’s milk without wincing; she exchanges sly grins with Val at the men’s clumsy flirtations; offers to hold little Sam for a while and give Gilly a rest; she dances with Pyp and Grenn; already has Sam’s admiration for being one of the few patrons at the neglected Castle Black library; and she wins over Davos by discussing with him, in frank terms, the truth about Winterfell’s decline since Robb’s death.</p><p>Jon sits in his usual corner nursing his usual drink when Melisandre blows in on a draft from a shattered window pane. She stands too close to him, her slouching posture an insinuation all on its own, and leans in to say, “It’s clever, what she’s doing.”</p><p>Jon follows her gaze across the bar, to where Sansa is taking Edd by the hand and encouraging him to join in the chorus of a truly horrendous rendition of “Jenny of Oldstones.” He asks Melisandre, “What is it you think she’s doing, exactly?”</p><p>“Gathering allies, naturally.”</p><p>“You say that like there’s going to be a war.”</p><p>Melisandre looks at him the way she did when he first woke up and found her with his blood in her mouth: like she wants something from him. “Jon Snow, the war has already started. She knows it. Deep down, you know it too. But she wants to win.”</p><p>“Don’t meddle,” Jon sighs.</p><p>She laughs, then reaches over to grab hold of his glass and take a sip of the drink that she has no more need of than he does— but Jon seizes her wrist so tightly that she’s startled. “I mean it,” he growls. “Leave her out of your schemes.”</p><p>Something about the motion— maybe its suddenness or its ferocity— catches Sansa’s eye from across the bar. Her blue gaze sears him, and he releases Melisandre’s wrist. It’s disconcerting to realize that his smallest actions, even the ones he thought were secret and insignificant, do not go unnoticed.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>HALF MOON</p><p>Sansa asks Jon to drive her to Deepwood Motte, but when they arrive, Robbett Glover doesn’t even let them in the front door. They stand on the stoop, like misbehaving dogs who have been banished outside, while Glover glowers at them through the dark yawning gap created by the chain on the door. “Were you followed?” he asks.</p><p>Resisting the urge to look over her shoulder for glowing eyes in the surrounding woods, Sansa shakes her head. Her mother’s courtesies have been so deeply instilled in her that they’ve become instinct: “Thank you for meeting with us. You have a lovely home—”</p><p>“I didn’t agree to meet with you. You showed up at my door like beggars,” the man says. “And if the Boltons find out you came here, my <em>lovely home </em>will be burnt to the ground. Myself and my family will be hunted down, shot, and skinned.”</p><p>“That’s precisely why Ramsay needs to be dealt with. But we can’t do that alone.”</p><p>“Your former husband, you mean?"</p><p>Jon says, “Aye, and where were you, Glover, when Ramsay forced her hand? Ned Stark would think it an awful disgrace to witness what the men who were once loyal to him have allowed to happen to his eldest daughter.”</p><p>“Where were <em>you</em>, Snow?” Glover snarls in return. “Ned Stark would think it a shame to see what his sons have allowed to befall the north. I was loyal to your brother and it ruined us.”<br/>Hoping to appeal to the man’s vanity, Sansa says, “So are you just going to spend the rest of your life hiding in fear, or will you help us reclaim the north? You were a formidable wolf. We would be honored to have you fight with us.”</p><p>“Who else would I be fighting alongside?” Glover asks.</p><p>“The Mormonts.”</p><p>“Who else?”</p><p>“The wildlings,” Jon admits. Glover then tosses back his head in a bitter laugh, exposing the vulnerable skin of his neck, and a part of Sansa that she’s spent her life trying to suppress longs to tear into it.</p><p>“You think you’re going to defeat Ramsay Bolton with the wildings, our enemies for centuries,” Glover scoffs. “And with this bastard— whatever he is nowadays. Don’t think I haven’t heard the rumors.” He addresses Jon directly: “Could you even enter this house if I didn’t invite you inside? You’re no better than Ramsay, now.” He turns back to Sansa. “I would wish you luck, Mrs. Bolton, but I think that’d be a waste of breath.”</p><p>He slams the door with such force that Sansa can’t help but wince. She stumbles away, breathing deeply, hating the way that every ragged exhale— stained silver in the cold night air— seems like an unbearable human frailty. She wants to be invulnerably calm.</p><p>She can feel Jon fuming beside her, and it helps distract her from her own shame to say to him: “It’s not true, what he said. You’re not— you’re not a monster.”</p><p>It takes him a long, perilous moment to regain enough control over himself to say, “And you’re not <em>Mrs. Bolton</em>.”</p><p>But Sansa fears that even though they both mean well, they’re still lying to each other.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The moment Jon enters the apartment and sees an older man— short, flecks of silver in his dull brown hair, dressed in a suit that looks obscenely expensive— sitting across from Sansa and sharing a bottle of wine, he instantly discerns two things. First, the stranger is Petyr Baelish— he matches the description Sansa had given, and who else could it be, with such a possessive hand placed on her bare knee? And second, Jon knows that he was never meant to know Baelish had come here. When he walks through the door coming home early from work, scarcely a second passes before Sansa smoothes her face into tranquil welcome, but in that second, her expression had been one of naked shock, quickly transformed vexation. This visit with Baelish was clearly meant to be a secret.</p><p>Baelish catches notice of him. “You must Jon Snow,” he says. “I’d heard a rumor that you were no longer among the living, but I see that’s untrue.”</p><p><br/>“Not for lack of trying.”</p><p><br/>The man then turns back to Sansa. “Well, I think I ought to be going.”</p><p><br/>“Oh, I would hate for you to feel put out,” Sansa says graciously. But over his shoulder, she’s still looking at Jon.</p><p>“Believe me, I know when I’ve overstayed my welcome.” Baelish places a lingering kiss on her cheek, close enough to her mouth to be considered improper. He whispers something to her that Jon can’t hear, before more clearly stating: “It is always such a unique pleasure to see you. And I hope you call me to continue our discussion.”<br/>Sansa promises that she will, then sees him out the door. Before it shuts completely though, Jon slips through and goes out to the veranda. Baelish hears this and stops walking.</p><p>“You’re that orphan the Starks took in, aren’t you?” he says, falsely cordial. “I always thought Catelyn was a saint to agree to that. The things dear old Ned demanded of her— some would say he took her for granted.”</p><p><br/>“Aye, you know how to treat a woman far better. Selling a girl to the man who murdered her family.”</p><p>A shudder seizes through Baelish then. It could just be the cold— the wind can slice through a man like a sword this far north, and though Baelish’s coat is expensive, it’s far too thin— or it could be the way that Jon stated the truth. He reckons that Baelish isn’t used to that. It’s not his way; he speaks in metaphors and mistruths. And Jon is certain that when Sansa is with him, she adapts to his language.</p><p>“Do you think you’re defending her honor?” Baelish asks. When Jon doesn’t answer, he continues needling until he finds a chink in his armor: “Because that’s not what she wants.”<br/>“What does she want then, in your esteemed opinion?”</p><p>“Something you can’t give her.”</p><p>“Aren’t you generous?”</p><p>“I love Sansa, like I loved her mother, and—”</p><p>Baelish doesn’t get the chance to finish this touching vow, for Jon reaches out and grabs him by his lavish silk tie, slams him against the wall with all his strength. Baelish’s currency of promises and lies isn’t worth very much when he’s unable to utter a word and scarcely able to breath. He weakly claws at Jon’s hand as his face turns scarlet, then blue. Jon knows that what he’s doing is reckless. But he loathes the way Baelish holds Sansa’s name in his mouth; he’d said he loved her, but from a man like that, love only meant selfish wanting.</p><p>“Touch her again and I’ll kill you,” Jon snarls. The sole reason he tosses him aside is because he suspects that Sansa will angry if he kills him.</p><p>It doesn’t matter much, though; when he goes back to the apartment, she’s angry regardless, white-lipped and silent in a way that reminds him of Catelyn. She watches at the window and waits for the scarlet taillights of Baelish’s car to recede completely before she snaps, “Why did you do that?”</p><p>“Sansa, he betrayed you—”</p><p>“You think I don’t know that?”</p><p>She’s wearing a dress that he’s never seen before, one he hadn’t even been aware she owned. It’s made of green fabric, and not enough of it. The sight of her skin in the moonlight disarms him. “Why did you invite him here?”</p><p>“Because he’s rich, and infatuated with me, and I wanted to exploit that. Honestly, Jon— the men of the north aren’t going to rally behind me just because I give them a rousing speech and remind them of their duty. Maybe that would work if either of us were Robb, but I’m a girl and you’re a bastard. We tried to do this the honorable way, and it didn’t work. So I’ll do this the dishonorable way, and I won’t let you make me feel guilty for it.”</p><p>Sansa strides back toward the bedroom, but then stops in the doorway.“Could you unzip my dress for me?” she asks.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“The dress, Jon.”</p><p>Despite the argument still roiling in the air, he can’t say no to her. She sweeps her hair to the side, exposing the delicate nape of her neck. Very careful not to touch her, Jon maneuvers the zipper halfway down her back. The dress falls open slightly, revealing a swathe of pale skin and the strip of black lace that is her bra strap. Jon quickly looks away, and Sansa turns around to face him, clutching the dress to her chest. “Thank you,” she says.</p><p>He can’t let this fester, can’t let her go to bed believing that he considers her weak or in some way disgraceful. “I just don’t— I thought you wouldn’t want to have to deal with men like Baelish anymore,” he tries to explain.</p><p>“I can take care of myself, Jon. You don’t need to worry about me.”</p><p>“That man forgets you’re a wolf.”</p><p>The last thing she says to him before closing the door is, “So do you, sometimes.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>WAXING GIBBOUS</p><p>Sansa doesn’t pay very much mind to the man in the corner of the bar. He’s slouched in the corner, glowering into some dark brew. His face is like a mountain, craggy and severe, with an avalanche of a silver beard, though his eyes are young enough with the way they follow Sansa as she moves through the bar. Still, the north is full of men old before their time, and Sansa is used to men watching her. She doesn’t pay him any mind until it’s nearly dawn.</p><p>The bar has closed for the night; she and Val clean up, and Jon walks with her back home. The man must not be as drunk as he let on, for he tails them skillfully enough, skulking in the shadows and keeping sufficient distance. But Sansa has a habit of looking over her shoulder and when they reach the parking lot of their apartment building, she murmurs in Jon’s ear, “Someone is following us. Has been since we left the bar.”<br/>Jon stiffens and seethes. He turns around. There’s no point in him being subtle. A confrontation is inevitable. This will likely end in blood, and the man must know it, for he takes a pistol out of his jacket pocket. Sansa assumes the bullets inside of it are silver.</p><p>“I just want the girl,” the man calls out as Jon wordlessly steps in front of her.</p><p>Sansa struggles to place the stranger— she’s never been one to forget a face. It takes her a dreadful moment before she’s able to say, “Smalljon Umber. I know you.”</p><p>Umber flinches.</p><p>“You came to Winterfell once. I must have been eight or nine. You caught that stag— it was enormous, must have been twelve points. Everyone was so impressed. My father clapped you on the back— do you remember?”</p><p>With every word she speaks, the man screws his face tighter with distress. Sansa isn’t sure if it’s regret or resolve; it’s desperate but she hopes that her words could coax some nostalgia or sympathy. But the source of Umber’s pain turns out to be determination, loyalty to Ramsay or to the coin with which his new master pays him. Even though his hands are shaking, his aim is nearly true. When he fires the gun, it finds its mark in Jon’s shoulder, inches from his heart.</p><p>It’s a silver bullet. When Jon was a wolf, it surely would have killed him. But Jon isn’t a wolf anymore.</p><p>Sansa glimpses the ugly surprise on Umber’s face in the moments before Jon lunges and tackles him to the ground. There’s a brief, violent struggle; the gun gets loose and goes skittering across the icy asphalt. Sansa races to pick it up. It feels heavy and cold when she does. Meanwhile, Jon gets his hands around Umber’s neck and cleanly snaps it. It’s as easy as if he were breaking kindling for a fire over his knee.</p><p>“Should we… throw him in the river or something?” Sansa asks as Jon staggers to his feet.</p><p>“No. Leave it as a warning for Ramsay.”</p><p>No questions will be asked. The north is full of dead men.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Back in the apartment, Sansa lifts the shirt off of Jon’s body as gently as she can, then inspects the gunshot wound in his shoulder. “It seems clean enough,” she says. “Went straight through, didn’t hit anything major.”</p><p>“It won’t kill me,” Jon says through gritted teeth. “It’ll just hurt like a bitch.”</p><p>Of course he hasn’t got any astringent in his medicine cabinet, so she douses the wound in whiskey, shushes Jon as he curses, sops up the blood with a damp rag, then stitches and bandages the injury. There’s not much else she can do, but afterwards Jon still looks paler than usual, and vulnerable in a way that frightens Sansa.</p><p>“What else do you need?” she asks.</p><p>“Nothing.”</p><p>“Don’t be a martyr, Jon.”</p><p>“I’ve had worse.”</p><p><br/>“That doesn’t mean you’re not suffering now.” She bites her lip, and as she does so, the realization strikes her. “You need blood, don’t you?”</p><p><br/>He avoids looking at her, instead gazes at the place on the floor where the red drops have fallen from his wound and have begun to set in and stain. Sullen and stubborn as when he was a boy, he insists, “I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“I want to help you. Let me help you.”</p><p><br/>When she reaches out to grasp him by the arm— a tactic that has worked in the past, when it comes to persuading him about something— he evades her touch even though the movement clearly pains him. So Sansa tries a different strategy. “What if Umber wasn’t the only one? What if Ramsay sends someone else tonight?”</p><p>He doesn’t resist this time as she takes hold of his jaw and tilts his head to look at her. Firmly, like a mother or maybe a commander, she says, “I need you strong.” And though his grey eyes are alight with some fierce emotion— it could be shame or self-loathing or maybe even lust, Sansa doesn’t know— he nods. If she weren’t so worried about him, Sansa could laugh. Of course the way to convince him wasn’t to appeal to his hunger or even his self-preservation, but to give him an order. He’d been taught to be ready to die for orders long ago.</p><p>She asks him what she can do to make this easier for him, and he unclenches his jaw enough to tell her to lie down on the couch. After a moment, he adds a strangled <em>please. </em>Once she’s lying there, he adds, “Could you move your hair back?”</p><p><br/>“What, like this?”</p><p>“No, more— may I?”</p><p><br/>She nods. When he pushes her hair back she can’t control the violent shiver that passes through her. It reminds her of when she was running from Ramsay and passed through a river half-congealed with ice and thought she might die of cold, but at least she was free. But Jon leans away, once again conflicted. “I’ve never— I’ve never drank from anyone and… stopped before. I’ve always—”</p><p>
  <em>Killed them.</em>
</p><p>“Jon, I trust you.”<br/>In a perverse way, it reminds her of the stories she used to read when she was young— the fair maiden asleep in a moldering castle, the valiant knight kneeling down to wake her with a kiss and break the curse. But when Jon descends toward her, his mouth lands on her neck; she can feel his teeth resting slick and sharp against the blue vein for a moment before he pierces the flesh. It hurts no worse than a prick from a needle.</p><p>Sansa can’t tell how long it lasts. She stares up at the ceiling, pale grey in the moonlight, with unfocused eyes. She waits for Jon to stop; it is in his nature to be so endlessly self-restrained that she expects him to be the one to know when enough is enough. But he doesn’t, he keeps drinking. At a certain point Sansa can feel herself growing weaker, and it’s then that she raises a hand and tightens it onto Jon’s dark curls to try and tear him away.</p><p>At first he’s defiant as a drunkard who refuses to be pulled away from his favorite barstool, so she tugs harder. Starks have always been stronger than most, even her, the weakest of the Starks. For a moment Sansa fears that strength and reason and whatever little love Jon has for her won’t be enough, but then he severs the connection and straightens.</p><p>There’s a drop of blood hanging on his lower lip, and Sansa feels a strange sick thrill at the sight of it before Jon drags a hand over his mouth.</p><p>“How do you feel?” he asks.</p><p>“Lightheaded.”</p><p>“Thank you. For doing that.”</p><p>“You saved my life, Jon. It’s only right.”</p><p>He now looks as revived as she feels weakened. His cheeks are flushed pink and he’s once again galvanized by a deep inner resource of power. Even though he’s motionless, it only seems like he’s waiting for the right moment to strike. He looks beautiful, Sansa realizes. If she weren’t too feeble to lift her head from the couch, she might have kissed him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It must have been a few months, a few turns of the moon, before he left home— for even now, five years later, when Jon thinks of home, he thinks of Winterfell. He would’ve been just shy of eighteen, and Sansa sixteen. Both their lives were just beginning.</p><p>The full moon was descending into the pale blue dawn horizon, sinking as surely as a body with stones in its pockets. Jon was emerging from the woods. He doesn’t remember where the others were. He was intent on searching for the clothes he’d left neatly piled somewhere in the backyard,. Just as he broke from the treeline, he was a flash of movement. He traced it to the source, a second story window of the Starks’ house— Sansa’s bedroom. He saw her face, gazing down through the glass, pale and remote as the moon. She saw him, and he saw her, and they both knew it. Then Sansa pulled the lace curtain back to its proper, demure place, and disappeared from view.</p><p>Neither of them ever mentioned it, and a few months later Jon was gone.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The night before the full moon, Sansa asks Jon to handcuff her to the radiator in the bedroom. “I don’t trust myself. I don’t want to run wild,” she explains. Jon knows exactly what she means; he remembers the influence the nearly-full moon used to have on him. It would beckon the blood in his veins to run hot, rise, and yearn like the waves at high tide. Logic succumbed more honest base impulses: instinct, hunger, bloodlust, pure wanting.</p><p>“I’ll see you in the morning,” Sansa says brightly after Jon has hidden the key somewhere in the apartment. He doesn’t go to work that evening; he’s already quit in anticipation of tomorrow night, when they’ll either take back Winterfell or he’ll find a stake in his heart.</p><p>He stands guard in the living room. Around midnight, he starts to hear the harsh clash of metal against metal— Sansa must be pulling at her restraints. Then she begins to softly again and scratch against the floorboards. Jon hardly lasts half an hour before the sounds of her distress are too much to bear. He enters the bedroom to see if she’s all right, even though he knows she’s not and there’s nothing he can do.</p><p>Sansa twists her head back to look at him from where she lies on the floor, rebelling against the very limits of her own body. She emits a wordless growl, but Jon doesn’t need language to understand her meaning.</p><p>“You asked me to do this,” he says softly. “You wanted this, you just don’t remember right now.”<br/>Her eyes narrow. Jon sees that her eyes are nearly black— the blue irises have been consumed by dilated pupils. She looks at him the way she did years ago, the way he tried to forget and ran away when he couldn’t: not like a princess in a tower, high above, so stern and ladylike, but a hungry girl who has just discovered what it is to want. She lets out another growl.</p><p>Jon strokes a lock of hair that has fallen loose across her face, tucks it back behind her ear, and Sansa moves her face to follow his hand, keening against him like an animal. She raises herself up to a crouch, then kisses him.</p><p>All his life, Jon has struggled to prove others’ notions about him wrong— that he’s not dishonorable or lustful, that he can be trusted, that he doesn’t <em>want </em>the same way others do, that he’s not a monster. But he undoes a lifetime all at once by kissing her back.</p><p>He’s barely had time to savor this, or to fear the consequences, when Sansa is moving into his lap, as close to him as her restraints will allow. She straddles his hips, so that he can feel her, scorching and drenched, at the place where he’s growing hard. He thrusts up, despite himself, and she welcomes this with a gesture more wild than human: rubbing her nose against his as she kisses him, then venturing south and licking a long hot path on his neck, along the vein.</p><p>Her free hand finds the zipper of his jeans and fumbles. Before Jon’s mind catches up to his body and thinks to help her, Sansa is yet again tugging at her restraints with singleminded determination. This time, the silver handcuffs snap.</p><p>The sound reverberates. Jon tightens his grip on Sansa’s thighs, hoping that will hold her yet knowing from experience that it won’t. All it will do is leave bruises, but he doesn’t feel guilty about that quite yet. He’s too concerned, thinking about how if Sansa wants to run— why wouldn’t she want to run, she’s a wolf and it’s the night before the full moon— he’s powerless to stop her.</p><p>She stops and pulls away from him to look at the now-useless metal dangling from her wrist, sniffs the air. But then when she lunges, it’s not to leave. It’s to pin Jon to the floor.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>FULL MOON</p><p>Sansa wakes just before dawn, lying on unyielding wood of the bedroom floor. She feels like a piece of fruit that has been split open and hollowed out. But even as sore and reluctant to move as she is, she feels a new sensation: sated.</p><p>She turns her head in both directions— toward the abandoned bed, then toward the windows suffused with grey light— seeking the warmth of Jon’s presence. Then she sits up, wincing as she does so, and finds him just far enough away from her that she can’t reach out and touch him. He’s already awake— she wonders for how long— and his back is to her, all tense muscle, faded brutal scars, and fresh pink lines that her nails must have left scored in the flesh.</p><p>Hesitantly, she says, “The sun will rise soon.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“You should get some rest, before—”</p><p>“Don’t worry, I’ll be ready when you need me.”</p><p>The knowledge that she’s ruined everything drags on Sansa like a weight, pinning her to the floor as Jon sits up and starts to put on his jeans. She knows she should say something— flatter him or apologize or even tell the truth. She’s struggling to choose the right tactic when Jon, hovering in the doorway, about to leave, speaks first: “I’m sorry. If Ramsay doesn’t kill me tonight, then I’ll leave you alone. I won’t stay at Winterfell, I’ll go north again.”</p><p><br/>“Why? It’s your home.”</p><p><br/>Sansa had thought that was one thing she and Jon shared, other than history: a longing to go home. In her more hopeful moments she’d even imagined what it might be like. The two of them together in the old house. She truly does never learn.</p><p>“Sansa, you don’t have to be polite and pretend. Last night…”</p><p>She doesn’t want to hear what he’ll say next, that he regrets what happened.</p><p>“…you weren’t in your right mind. I took advantage of you.”</p><p>“Wait, what?”</p><p>“It’s my fault. I don’t blame you for never wanting to see me again.”</p><p>“I never said that. Jon, you didn’t ravish my poor helpless self last night. In the state I was in, if I didn’t want what you— what <em>we </em>were doing, I would’ve just torn your throat out.”<br/>She watches the tautness— a mixture of guilt and a soldier’s rigid stance— melt away from his body as he exhales, then turns back. “You don’t hate me?”<br/>“The opposite, really.” It slips out before Sansa can consider the possible consequences of uttering it.</p><p>Jon is quiet. Not in an obscure, aloof way— at least, Sansa doesn’t think so. Something significant has transpired between them, and Jon understands this just as well as she does. His silence therefore strikes her as more reverent than anything else.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Ramsay and his father changed the locks to the house in Winterfell, and while Sansa remembers that her parents kept a spare key under one of the stones in the garden, Tormund is too impatient to wait while she looks, and he kicks the door in.</p><p>Sam and Gilly sewing open wounds and setting broken bones in the dining room. The wildlings declare that they’re hungry, but more importantly thirsty, and commence to steadily drink their way though the Boltons’ stock of fine northern whiskey. Val sets a merry bonfire in the backyard, while Brienne and Podrick remove the wolf pelts from where they hang on the walls, toss them in the flames, and start to melt down the supply of silver bullets. A vague inclination to change the bedsheets, perhaps permitting everyone to get some rest, sends Sansa upstairs but the impulse fades as she wanders through her siblings’ bedrooms (ignoring the room Ramsay kept her in as if some circle of salt bars her from entering). In her parents’ former room, she finds one of her mother’s old sweaters in the very back of the closet. She slips it over her head. Tears well up when she discovers the smell of camellias still lingering in the weave of wool.</p><p>She’s about to obey an impulse to wash the blood from her mouth and throat when she realizes that Jon is nowhere to be found, not even lurking in some corner as he’s wont to do at celebrations. Sansa goes to the front door and looks outside. She discovers him leaning against the house, feet wet from dew as he stands in a trampled flowerbed, waiting with his hands in his pockets. “What are you doing out here?” she asks.</p><p>Jon runs his hands through his hair, and she realizes that he’s nervous for some reason. “Well, I can’t—you know. It’s the rules, it’s stupid. But I can’t come inside unless you—”</p><p>“Well, then won’t you please come in?” </p><p>She pulls him by his shirt up to the stoop. He willingly follows as she reels him in further, inside the house, all the way to a smiling bloody-mouthed kiss.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>